Abstract: New Data and Capabilities in the NASA Goddard Giovanni System

Giovanni, the GES-DISC Interactive Online Visualization ANd aNalysis Infrastructure, is the underlying infrastructure for a growing family of Web interfaces that allows users to analyze gridded and swath data interactively online without having to download any data. Giovanni is a simple but powerful tool for researchers to explore and analyze data without having to deal with original data format, volume, and complexity. Since 2002, Giovanni has served many users worldwide with TRMM and MODIS data visualization and analysis. With increasing size and complexity of Earth and Space Science data holdings and growing demands for better, faster, and less costly tools for data exploration, visualization and analysis, Giovanni has been extended to serve CALIPSO, CloudSat, SeaWiFS, TOMS, AIRS, OMI, MLS-Aura, HIRDLS, and HALOE data to the Atmospheric Composition, Aerosol, Air Quality, and other research communities. To further improve Giovanni extendibility, accessibility, and performance, Giovanni version 3 (G3) has been developed and is currently in operation at the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). In addition to the existing Giovanni instances, several new G3 instances have been released, including (1) A-Train Data Depot that is capable to allow access to, visualize, analyze and correlate distributed atmospheric measurements from A-Train instruments; (2) NEESPI, a multi-sensor multi-disciplinary instance dedicated to the studies of the environment of the Northern Eurasia; (3) Data Fusion, a prototype Giovanni instance that demonstrates the G3 capability for fusing Earth Science data from multiple sensors. Giovanni capabilities have also been extended to include direct access via WMS protocol, and to provide output in various popular formats, like KML for Google Earth. With much progress in data visualization, data analysis, and easy-to-use toolkits, G3 has simplified and strengthened its capabilities of providing closer links between visual representations and the underlying data and re-usable data analysis and visualization components. Because many of the new Giovanni services are built on newly developed generic and re-usable data service components, providing data lineage of these services is crucial and has been given a high priority.

With more than 800 Earth Science parameters from about 80 different data products, and more than 15 of the most commonly used analysis and visualization functions in the Earth Science research community, and with easy extendibility to new data products and services, Giovanni promises to continue to significantly facilitate and enable the research efforts of the community.